If I understand you correctly - I think you’re looking for the ‘vanilla-gnome-session’.

I to have been using gnome-shell for some time, (since it’s second iteration). Didn’t like it at first, (actually hated is the better word) but after a month of daily use, I found that I couldn’t go back to a conventional desktop. So I really do appreciate the Gnome-Devs and their HIGs. They do know what they’re doing and it seems they backup at least some of their design decisions by analysing user data. But … I’m digressing.

I’m running a “vanilla” experience on artful so I get that. Let me ask a different way. Will there be a official PPA or some other method for running nautilus 3.28 without the changes to other systems that @didrocks mentioned needing to support using 3.26? Something like how the Kubuntu team provides access to the latest KDE releases maybe though obviously at a smaller scale.

This isn’t a big deal just trying to understand and set my expectations. Thanks!

For Unity-7, I updated the patches for Nautilus and testing Nemo-Desktop (only the desktop portion). It actually works well. It has accounts-service integration and can be made to play well with Gnome.

I am guessing here, but it can be an actual feature removed due to Nautilus rework Gnome people made or, since launching applications require some permissions, it has been prohibited due to Wayland adoption.